Eugeen Van Mieghem
Encyclopedia
Eugeen Van Mieghem was a Belgian
artist born in the port of Antwerp. As a boy Van Mieghem was confronted with the harsh reality of life at the waterfront
.
Even at primary school he showed a talent for drawing
. He was introduced to the work of Vincent van Gogh
, Georges Seurat, Camille Pissarro
, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
and others at an exhibition organised by Flemish painter and architect Henry van de Velde
at the Antwerp Academy around 1892. He attended the Antwerp Academy but was from the school because his conservative teachers disliked his subject matter and his free, spontaneous way with it. He threw his lot in with progressive political and cultural movements, and joined an anarchist group, and by the early 1900s was recognized as one of the most promising young artists of the Antwerp school. He would never renounce his idealism
. He became the artist of the typical harbour folk: sack porters, sack makers, emigrants, dockers, bargees, and tramps.
Van Mieghem had his first taste of real success at La Libre Esthétique
in Brussels
, where his pastels and drawings hung alongside works by French
impressionists
such as Claude Monet
, Paul Cézanne
, Camille Pissarro
, Jean Renoir
and Edouard Vuillard
.
Van Mieghem married Augustine Pautre in 1902. At the end of November 1904 his young wife fell ill. Van Mieghem depicted her in an impressive series of drawings and pastels that rate alongside similar work by such artists as Rembrandt (The Serie of Saskia) and Ferdinand Hodler
(Valentine Godé). Grief-stricken at the death of his wife, it was 1910 before Van Mieghem showed his work again.
After his first individual exhibition at the Royal Society of Art of Antwerp in 1912 international interest in his work mounted and group exhibitions followed in Cologne
and The Hague
. In March 1919 he showed his wartime work in Antwerp. This remarkable series of mainly drawings and pastels met with the wide approval of art critics, who compared this work to that of Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen
, Jean-Louis Forain
, and Käthe Kollwitz
. After an article by his friendand Flemish author Willem Elsschot
appeared, Van Mieghem was also able to show his wartime work in a gallery in Scheveningen in The Netherlands
. In 1929 he became a teacher of life drawing at the Academy in Antwerp and he participated in exhibitions every year until his death in 1930.
In European social art of the turn of the century, international art critics compare his work to that of figures like Käthe Kollwitz, de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Steinlen. Van Mieghem had no equal when it came down to drawing and painting the lives of ordinary people, living and working in an international seaport. When it comes to capturing social reality, his work has much of the power and authenticity of Jean-François Millet
's. Like the precursor of social art, Van Mieghem never had to leave his own environment in search of subjects. The world was on his doorstep.
In recent years Van Mieghem's work has been rediscovered internationally. In 2000 a Steinlen retrospective at the Picasso Museum in Barcelona
included seven of his works and brought international recognition for his work. In 1993 a Van Mieghem Museum opened its doors in Antwerp with a collection of 150 of his works.
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
artist born in the port of Antwerp. As a boy Van Mieghem was confronted with the harsh reality of life at the waterfront
Dock (maritime)
A dock is a human-made structure or group of structures involved in the handling of boats or ships, usually on or close to a shore.However, the exact meaning varies among different variants of the English language...
.
Even at primary school he showed a talent for drawing
Drawing
Drawing is a form of visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoal, chalk, pastels, markers, styluses, and various metals .An artist who...
. He was introduced to the work of Vincent van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh , and used Brabant dialect in his writing; it is therefore likely that he himself pronounced his name with a Brabant accent: , with a voiced V and palatalized G and gh. In France, where much of his work was produced, it is...
, Georges Seurat, Camille Pissarro
Camille Pissarro
Camille Pissarro was a French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of St Thomas . His importance resides in his contributions to both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, as he was the only artist to exhibit in both forms...
, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa or simply Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman, and illustrator, whose immersion in the colourful and theatrical life of fin de siècle Paris yielded an œuvre of exciting, elegant and provocative images of the modern...
and others at an exhibition organised by Flemish painter and architect Henry van de Velde
Henry van de Velde
Henry Clemens Van de Velde was a Belgian Flemish painter, architect and interior designer. Together with Victor Horta and Paul Hankar he could be considered one of the main founders and representatives of Art Nouveau in Belgium...
at the Antwerp Academy around 1892. He attended the Antwerp Academy but was from the school because his conservative teachers disliked his subject matter and his free, spontaneous way with it. He threw his lot in with progressive political and cultural movements, and joined an anarchist group, and by the early 1900s was recognized as one of the most promising young artists of the Antwerp school. He would never renounce his idealism
Idealism
In philosophy, idealism is the family of views which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing...
. He became the artist of the typical harbour folk: sack porters, sack makers, emigrants, dockers, bargees, and tramps.
Van Mieghem had his first taste of real success at La Libre Esthétique
La Libre Esthétique
La Libre Esthétique was an artistic society founded in 1893 in Brussels to continue the efforts of the artists' group Les XX dissolved the same year...
in Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
, where his pastels and drawings hung alongside works by French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
impressionists
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
such as Claude Monet
Claude Monet
Claude Monet was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. . Retrieved 6 January 2007...
, Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th...
, Camille Pissarro
Camille Pissarro
Camille Pissarro was a French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of St Thomas . His importance resides in his contributions to both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, as he was the only artist to exhibit in both forms...
, Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s...
and Edouard Vuillard
Édouard Vuillard
Jean-Édouard Vuillard was a French painter and printmaker associated with the Nabis.-Early years and education:...
.
Van Mieghem married Augustine Pautre in 1902. At the end of November 1904 his young wife fell ill. Van Mieghem depicted her in an impressive series of drawings and pastels that rate alongside similar work by such artists as Rembrandt (The Serie of Saskia) and Ferdinand Hodler
Ferdinand Hodler
Ferdinand Hodler was one of the best-known Swiss painters of the 19th century.-Life:Hodler was born in Berne, the eldest of six children. His father, Jean Hodler, made a meager living as a carpenter; his mother, Marguerite , was from a peasant family...
(Valentine Godé). Grief-stricken at the death of his wife, it was 1910 before Van Mieghem showed his work again.
After his first individual exhibition at the Royal Society of Art of Antwerp in 1912 international interest in his work mounted and group exhibitions followed in Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
and The Hague
The Hague
The Hague is the capital city of the province of South Holland in the Netherlands. With a population of 500,000 inhabitants , it is the third largest city of the Netherlands, after Amsterdam and Rotterdam...
. In March 1919 he showed his wartime work in Antwerp. This remarkable series of mainly drawings and pastels met with the wide approval of art critics, who compared this work to that of Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen
Théophile Steinlen
Théophile Alexandre Steinlen, frequently referred to as just Steinlen , was a Swiss-born French Art Nouveau painter and printmaker....
, Jean-Louis Forain
Jean-Louis Forain
Jean-Louis Forain was a French Impressionist painter, lithographer, watercolorist and etcher.-Overview:Forain was born in Reims, Marne but at age eight, his family moved to Paris. He began his career working as a caricaturist for several Paris journals including Le Monde Parisien and Le rire...
, and Käthe Kollwitz
Käthe Kollwitz
Käthe Kollwitz was a German painter, printmaker, and sculptor whose work offered an eloquent and often searing account of the human condition in the first half of the 20th century...
. After an article by his friendand Flemish author Willem Elsschot
Willem Elsschot
Willem Elsschot , was a Flemish writer and poet . A few of his works have been translated into English.-Life:...
appeared, Van Mieghem was also able to show his wartime work in a gallery in Scheveningen in The Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
. In 1929 he became a teacher of life drawing at the Academy in Antwerp and he participated in exhibitions every year until his death in 1930.
In European social art of the turn of the century, international art critics compare his work to that of figures like Käthe Kollwitz, de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Steinlen. Van Mieghem had no equal when it came down to drawing and painting the lives of ordinary people, living and working in an international seaport. When it comes to capturing social reality, his work has much of the power and authenticity of Jean-François Millet
Jean-François Millet
Jean-François Millet was a French painter and one of the founders of the Barbizon school in rural France...
's. Like the precursor of social art, Van Mieghem never had to leave his own environment in search of subjects. The world was on his doorstep.
In recent years Van Mieghem's work has been rediscovered internationally. In 2000 a Steinlen retrospective at the Picasso Museum in Barcelona
Barcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...
included seven of his works and brought international recognition for his work. In 1993 a Van Mieghem Museum opened its doors in Antwerp with a collection of 150 of his works.
External links
- Van Mieghem Museum (Ernest Van Dijckkaai 9, B 2000 Antwerpen, tel. 32.3.211.03.30 mail: van.mieghem.museum@skynet.be).
- The exhibition 'Off to the New World - Emigrants by Eugeen Van Mieghem' at the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam ran from 24 October 2003 until 2 February 2004.
- The exhibition 'Antwerp=America, Eugeen Van Mieghem and the Emigrants of the Red Star Line' at the South Street Seaport Museum in New York ran in 2006.